Shofar FTP Archive File: people/m/mueller.filip/muller.004

Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac - Eyewitness Auschwitz: The Killing Method
Summary: The SS decides to improve the killing process by having its
victims remove their clothing before entering the gas chambers.
Collection of clothing and valuables described... prisoners
split up the food left behind...gassing method described..
Reply-To: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca
Followup-To: alt.revisionism
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA
Keywords: Aumeier,Auschwitz,Grabner,Ho"ssler,Quackernack,gas masks
Archive/File: holocaust/poland/auschwitz muller.004
Last-modified: 1993/09/16
XRef: index auschwitz
"We had spent several days idle in our cell when after evening
roll-call - at which, of course, we had not been present - the door
was suddenly opened. Outside in the corridor stood Stark, beside him
a prisoner whom we did not know. Obviously he was to take the place
of the two who had been shot in the pit. After we had left the
block, Stark made us run towards the main gate and from there
straight to the crematorium yard. There we were made to stand by the
wall beside the barred window of the cremation room. Stark swore us
to secrecy, threatening us with dire punishment in case we spoke to
anybody who came here. With a wink he indicated to Fischl that he
held him responsible for the strict compliance with this command.
Obediently Fischl replied: 'Yes, Herr Unterscharfuhrer!'
Stark - the name means 'strong' in English - did credit to his
name. He was tall and well built and had sandy hair. His body was
broad and strong and his legs sturdy and muscular: he was a healthy
young man in his prime. His worst fault was his violent temper.
When he blew his top - often for quite trivial reasons - it was best
to make oneself scarce; otherwise things might turn very nasty
indeed.
We prisoners and Stark were worlds apart. For us he seemed to have
no human feelings whatever. We only knew him as one who gave his
commands brusquely, insulted, abused and threatened us continually,
goaded us to work, and beat us mercilessly. To his superiors he was
assiduous and subservient. I often wondered how it was possible for
this young man, scarcely older than myself, to be so cruel, so
brutal, harbouring so unfathomable a hatred of the Jews. I doubted
whether he had actually ever come into close contact with Jews before
he came to Auschwitz. He was no doubt a victim of that Nazi
propaganda which put the blame for any misfortune, including the war,
on the Jews. How was it possible, I often asked myself, for a young
man of average intelligence and normal personality to carry out the
unspeakable atrocities demanded of him in the belief that thereby he
was doing his patriotic duty, without ever realizing that he was
being used as a tool by perverted political dictators ?
All traces of the horror of the last few days had been removed. The
very cobblestones in the yard had been hosed clean of blood and were
sparkling. Behind the higher outer concrete wall, near the SS motor
transport pool, a giant tree with wide-spread branches had begun to
break into leaf. This day it, and we, were to witness an event to
which Himmler, or perhaps even the Fuhrer in person, had given the
name of Geheime Reichssache, Secret Matter of the Reich.
There was a great hustle and bustle in the yard. First to appear
were Ouackernack, Stark, Kirschner, Dylewski and Palitzsch, all
carrying truncheons. After them came the camp elite, Aumeier,
Grabner and Untersturmfuhrer Hossler, as well as another SS leader
whom I did not know and who wore on his arm the emblem of the medical
profession.
We had not been waiting long when a large number of people began to
stream through the open gate, the majority of them dressed in dark
clothes. On the right side at chest height they all wore the yellow
Star of David. By and by the entire yard became crowded with these
people who were talking to each other in Polish or Yiddish. Most
were middle-aged, but there was a sprinkling of old men and women and
also of children among them. They were rather out of breath as if
they had been made to run all the way. Last to arrive was a group of
aged women who had been unable to keep up with the younger people and
who came staggering in on the point of complete exhaustion. Once the
stragglers were inside the gate was shut.
The uniformed executioners now stepped in front of the waiting
apprehensive crowd of several hundred. As though at a signal they
began to harangue them, waving their truncheons about and ordering
them to take their clothes off at once. The people were dazed with
fear. Clearly they suspected that something dreadful was to befall
them, but they could see no reason why they ought to undress out here
in the yard, women in front of men and vice versa. However, the SS
men, anxious to give them no time to think, kept shouting: 'Come on,
come on! Get undressed ! Get a move on ! Come on ! Come on ! Get
undresssed !' At last I tumbled to what was going on. One of the SS
men must have had the bright idea that it was more expedient to send
these people to their doom naked. For then the irksome task of
undressing them after their death would be avoided. Besides, if they
undressed while still alive, their clothes would not be torn because
they would think that they would need them again. Today this new
procedure was to be tried out for the first time.
However, it did not quite work out according to plan. In the
frightened and embarrassed faces of the men and women assembled in
the yard there was fear and mistrust. Although unaware of what
awaited them, they sensed the seriousness and danger of their
situation. Most of the men reacted to the threats and shouts by
slowly beginning to undo the collars of their shirts, while the women
bent down and, greatly embarrassed, undid their shoe-laces All this
took a very long time: it was not at all the efficient operation the
SS men had envisaged.
In a corner next to the gate I noticed a young woman and her child.
Her lips tightly pressed together looked like a scar. She gazed at
her small daughter then, stroking her, she slowly undressed her.
Older children, as alarmed as their parents, began slowly to take off
their clothes.
Meanwhile the representatives of the SS hierarchy stood on the
earthworks which had been thrown up on the roof of the crematorium.
From there they had a bird's eye view of what was going on. At first
they did not intervene, leaving everything to their minions. But the
alarm and disquiet of the people grew apace as did their fear of the
danger they could sense: they were taking off their clothes with
great deliberation in order to gain time.
These people came from the ghetto of Sosnovits only a few kilometres
away. No doubt rumours about the camp at Auschwitz had reached them;
no doubt they had wondered whether these were merely rumours or
whether there might not be some truth in the tales that were going
round. The brutal conduct of the SS surpassed their worst fears.
They felt instinctively that they were in great danger and began to
talk among themselves. In the yard there was a humming as in a
beehive. Once it dawned on the SS men that their brilliant plan of
deception was in jeopardy they flung themselves wildly into the
crowd, wielding their truncheons indiscriminately and yelling: ' Come
on, come on ! Get undressed ! Faster, faster!' The effect was
startling. The people seemed to wake up from an oppressive sleep.
The men who, up till then, had only undone a few buttons of collar
and shirt, hastily took off their jackets, trousers and shoes. Many
women were dashing about Into the crematorium helplessly, seeking
refuge with their husbands; frightened children were clinging more
tightly to their mothers. The brutal action of the SS men had
completely unnerved the people. They were confused, frightened,
unable to communicate with each other and incapable of thinking. As
the SS men persisted in their rampaging, the crowd was seized by
panic. Even their passive resistance was now broken and they did
what was being beaten into them again and again: 'Come on ! Get
undressed ! Come on ! Faster! Get a move on!' Men, women and
children were now tearing their clothes off, helping each other to
dodge the blows, and in no time at all they were all standing there
naked, each with a small heap of clothes piled in front of them.
We, too, were horrified and shaking all over. Never before had I
experienced anything so dreadful. Even Fischl, our god-fearing
giant, was trembling, but he still had enough strength and faith for
a prayer and he muttered the Shema, the Jewish equivalent of the
Lord's Prayer. When he realized that his devout murmuring might
attract the attention of the SS men, he fell silent. Though almost
indispensable as a strong and dutiful robot, they might not have
shown much appreciation for his religious fervour.
Once again I watched the young mother in the corner by the gate.
Carrying her child on her arm she, too, was now undressed. She was
not ashamed of her nakedness, but the premonition that perhaps she
had undressed her child and herself for the last time put her into a
state of helpless submission to God's will.
Two of the SS men took up positions on either side of the entrance
door. Shouting and wielding their truncheons, like beaters at a
hunt, the remaining SS men chased the naked men, women and children
into the large room inside the crematorium. All that was left in the
yard were the pathetic heaps of clothing which we had to gather
together to clear the yard for the second half of the transport. We
removed suit-cases, rucksacks, clothes and shoes and piled them
higgledy-piggledy in a great heap in a corner. Then we covered
everything with a large tarpaulin.
When we had finished, a new batch of several hundred people poured
into the empty yard. The prelude to death was repeated with equal
brutality and with the same ending. Finally there were about 600
desperate people crammed into the crematorium. A few SS men were
leaving the building and the last one locked the entrance door from
the outside. Before long the increasing sound of coughing, screaming
and shouting for help could be heard from behind the door. I was
unable to make out individual words, for the shouts were drowned by
knocking and banging against the door, intermingled with sobbing and
crying. After some time the noise grew weaker, the screams stopped.
Only now and then there was a moan, a rattle, or the sound of muffled
knocking against the door. But soon even that ceased and in the
sudden silence each one of us felt the horror of this terrible mass
death.
Once everything was quiet inside the crematorium, Unterscharfu"hrer
Teuer, followed by Stark, appeared on the flat roof. Both had
gas-masks dangling round their necks. They put down oblong boxes
which looked like food tins, each tin was labelled with a death's
head and marked Poison! What had been just a terrible notion, a
suspicion, was now a certainty: the people inside the crematorium had
been killed with poison gas.
When the SS men had gone, Stark ordered us to sort the clothes and to
search them for money and valuables. He was particularly keen on the
latter. The yard was dimly lit by the one lantern over the entrance.
So we did only a very rough and ready kind of sorting. The objects
which people had concealed in their pockets and shoes were proof of
the fact that not one of them had expected death to await them at his
journey's end.
We were ordered to place the valuables into separate boxes, foreign
currency into one, watches into another, gold and jewellery into a
third. Clothing, shoes and underwear were sorted into different
heaps. There were separate heaps of knives, spectacles, bottles,
medicines, and dolls which their little owners had left behind for
ever. There was one large mound of prayer- books and velvet bags
containing the Tephillim or phylacteries. Fischl seemed particularly
interested in this collection; and during a moment when he was
unobserved he managed to slip a Tephillim bag under his jacket. We
piled the sorted objects on a trolley and took them to the camp's
clothing stores. As I turned round, I saw Stark climbing across the
sloping earth bank onto the roof. Soon afterwards the sound of the
fan starting up could be heard.
It was late at night when we were locked into cell 13. Once again
the light was left on for a while so that we could eat. Today we did
not ravenously attack our rations, but instead pulled out from under
shirts and jackets and from out of pockets stuff we had organized.
One after the other we laid bread, sugar, saccharine, tobacco and
other goodies in front of our foreman. Fischl examined everything
carefully. Then he divided the booty into seven scrupulously equal
parts. In spite of what had happened today, Fischl appeared to be
the most satisfied among us. The Lord Adonai had hearkened to him:
now he owned a prayer-book in Hebrew -and a set of Tephillim. Early
next morning he went through the ritual of putting on the
phylacteries - this time there was no need for him to mime the action
- before saying his morning prayers. He prayed so fervently and
humbly that God - if He existed - must surely have heard his voice;
for it rose from a place where men and women, who like himself
believed in the Eternal One and who adored the Almighty Lord, were
daily slaughtered like cattle. And this foreman who was forced to
help the SS murderers take his fellow Jews to their doom, this strong
man who, at first glance, seemed ready for anything, never once in
his innermost soul renounced the faith of his fathers. At this
moment he must have been alone among Jews all over the world to
praise God's name in a place where that name was desecrated in the
vilest possible manner. To me Fischl seemed a creature from another
world, a world solely ruled and embodied by a God whom I sought in
vain to comprehend in Auschwitz.
To begin with our fears that presently we might have to return to the
crematorium in order to dispose of the corpses of Jews who had been
gassed the day before proved unfounded. We stayed in our cell for
three days. On the fourth day we were awakened at the crack of dawn
by Stark's terrifying voice yelling from the yard: ' Fischl team, get
ready ! ' Our working party had been given a title.
It was dawn, a few hours before roll-call, when we entered the
crematorium yard. The prisoners in the camp were still asleep. But
the SS men with their machine-guns in their watch-towers were
particularly vigilant at that hour, for it was at break of day that
prisoners would decide upon the only way of escape: across the
prohibited area into the high-tension barbed-wire fence.
Oberscharfu"hrer Ouackernack turned up with several young SS-
Unterfu"hrers today, we noticed, they did not carry any truncheons.
Once more we had to stand by the wall beneath the window of the
cremation room. For a few minutes there was tense silence. Then we
heard the noise of trucks approaching. They stopped outside the
crematorium yard, the engines were switched off and all was silent
once more until the two halves of the wooden gate were opened. A
procession of a few hundred middle-aged men and women entered the
yard. Once again there was also a sprinkling of old people and
children. Peaceably they came in, showing none of the signs of utter
exhaustion we had observed in the people of a few days earlier.
Their SS escorts, too, behaved differently: there was no shouting, no
goading, guns were carefully tucked away in their pockets, and not a
word of abuse passed their lips. The guards at the gate were
becoming impatient. They thought the prisoners could smell a rat;
the column was walking far too slowly, and before they could close
the gate they had to wait until the very last person, a little
one-legged man limping on crutches, had reached the yard.
We, too, thought the surprisingly gentle demeanour of the SS men very
odd indeed. They looked amiable, they behaved affably, directing
people like traffic policemen to get them distributed right across
the yard. Some of the arrivals looked around curiously but also
somehow alarmed before putting down their small suit- cases,
rucksacks and parcels. They spoke Polish and Yiddish. I was able to
catch a few words and learned that these people had been working in a
factory. From there they were deported quite suddenly, supposedly
for important work using their special skills. Although the
behaviour of the SS men gave them no cause for alarm, the locked yard
made them suspicious and afraid. The main subject of their
conversation was work, for they were all skilled workers, and death,
for they were fully aware of their situation and were anxiously
looking for some glimmer of hope. Would they be given an opportunity
of doing something useful ? For life in the ghetto - and their
yellow Stars of David indicated that it was thence they had come -
had taught them that only the useful had a chance of survival.
And how were we to act in this situation ? Was there anything at all
we could do? For we knew only too well what was going to happen to
these people within the next hour. We stood rooted against the wall,
paralysed by a feeling of impotence and the certainty of their and
our inexorable fate. Alas, there was no power on earth which could
have saved these poor innocent wretches. They had been condemned to
death by a megalomaniac dictator who had set himself up to be judge
and jury. Hitler and his henchmen had never made a secret of their
attitude to theJews nor of their avowed intention to exterminate them
like vermin. The whole world knew it, and knowing it remained
silent; was not their silence equivalent to consent? It was
considerations like these which led my companions and me to the
conviction that the world consented to what was happening here before
our eyes.
Would anything have been changed in the course of events if any of us
had stepped out and, facing the crowd, had shouted: ' Do not be
deceived, men and women, you are taking your last walk, a terrible
death in the gas chamber awaits you !' The majority would not have
believed us because it was too terrible to be believed. On the other
hand a warning like this would have led to a panic ending in a bloody
massacre and our certain death. Did we have the right to take such a
risk and, in taking it, to gamble away our chance to go on living for
the time being ? What, at that moment, was more important: a few
hundred men and women, still alive but facing imminent death from
which there was no saving them, or a handful of eyewitnesses, one or
two of whom might, at the price of suffering and denial of self,
survive to bear witness against the murderers some day ?
All at once the crowd fell silent. The gaze of several hundred pairs
of eyes turned upwards to the flat roof of the crematorium. Up
there, immediately above the entrance to the crematorium, stood
Aumeier, flanked by Grabner, and by Hossler who later was put in
charge of the women's camp. Aumeier spoke first. His voice thick
with booze, he talked persuasively to these frightened, alarmed and
doubt-racked people. 'You have come here,' he began, 'to work in the
same way as our soldiers who are fighting at the front. Anybody who
is able and willing to work will be all right.' After Aumeier it was
Grabner's turn. He asked the people to get undressed because, in
their own interest, they had to be disinfected. 'First and foremost
we shall have to see that you are healthy,' he said. 'Therefore
everyone will have to take a shower. Now, when you've had your
showers, there'll be a bowl of soup waiting for you all.' Life
flooded back into the upturned faces of the men and women listening
eagerly to every word. The desired effect had been achieved: initial
suspicion gave way to hope, perhaps even to the belief that
everything might still end happily. Ho"ssler sensing the change of
mood quickly began to speak. In order to invest this large-scale
deception with the semblance of complete honesty, he put on a perfect
act to delude these unsuspecting people. 'You over there in the
corner,' he cried, pointing at a little man, 'what's your trade?'
'I'm a tailor,' came the prompt reply. 'Ladies' or gents'?' inquired
Ho"ssler. 'Both,' the little man replied confidently. ' Excellent !
' Hossler was delighted 'That's precisely the sort of people we need
in our workrooms. When you've had your shower, report to me at once.
And you over there, what can you do ?' He turned to a good-look- ing
middle-aged woman who was standing right in front. 'I am a trained
nurse, sir,' she replied. 'Good for you, we urgently need nurses in
our hospital, and if there are any more trained nurses among you,
please report to me immediately after your shower.'
Now it was Grabner's turn again. 'We need craftsmen of all kinds,
fitters, electricians, motor mechanics, welders, bricklayers and
cement mixers; you must all report. But we'll also need unskilled
helpers. Everybody is going to get well-paid work here.' And he
finished with the words: 'Now get undressed quickly, otherwise your
soup will get cold.'
All the people's fears and anxieties had vanished as if by magic.
Quiet as lambs they undressed without having to be shouted at or
beaten. Each tried his or her best to hurry up with their undressing
so that they might be among the first to get under the shower. After
a very short time the yard was empty but for shoes, clothing,
underwear, suit-cases and boxes which were strewn all over the
ground. Cozened and deceived, hundreds of men, women and children
had walked, innocently and without a struggle, into the large
windowless chamber of the crematorium. When the last one had crossed
the threshold, two SS men slammed shut the heavy iron-studded door
which was fitted with a rubber seal, and bolted it.
Meanwhile, the Unterfu"hrers on duty had gone onto the crematorium
roof, from where the three SS leaders had addressed the crowd. They
removed the covers from the six camouflaged openings. Then,
protected by gas-masks, they poured the green- blue crystals of the
deadly gas into the gas chamber.
At Grabner's command the engines of the trucks still standing near by
were turned on. Their noise was to prevent anyone in the camp from
hearing the shouting and the banging on the doors of the dying in the
gas chamber. We, however, were spared nothing, but had to witness
everything in close proximity. It was as though Judgment Day had
come. We could clearly hear heart-rending weeping, cries for help,
fervent prayers, violent banging and knocking and, drowning
everything, the noise of truck engines running at top speed.
Aumeier, Grabner and Hossler were checking by their watches the time
it took for the noise inside the gas chamber to cease, cracking
macabre jokes while they were waiting, like 'The water in the showers
must be very hot to make them scream so loudly.' Their triumphant
faces showed clearly that they were delighted with the easy victory
they had today scored over the declared arch-enemy of the Third
Reich. When the groans and death-rattles had stopped the engines
were switched off. One more mission in the campaign called
Sonderbehandlung (Special Treatment) had been successfully completed.
Shortly afterwards camp life awoke to a new day. Ration carriers
were lugging vats of tea into the barracks, senior prisoners were
busy getting ready for counting roll-call, Kapos were assigning
prisoners to working parties, and from the camp we could hear the
rousing music of the camp orchestra sending the prisoners off to
work.
Aumeier and his underlings had climbed down from the roof. With some
considerable pride he turned to Stark and Ouackernack who were
walking by his side and remarked like a master addressing his
apprentices: ' Well, you two, have you got it now? That's the way to
do it!'
Afterwards this technique was used as a reliable method for the mass
extermination of human beings without bloodshed, and it began to
assume monstrous proportions. From the end of May 1942 one transport
after another vanished in this way into the crematorium of Auschwitz.
At the same time, the siting of the crematorium in the immediate
vicinity of the camp was fraught with danger: there was the distinct
possibility that The Secret Matter of the Reich could not remain
hushed up forever, notwithstanding its top- secret classification.
It was for this reason that the columns of deported Jews were
conducted to the 'showers' either at daybreak when the camp inmates
were still asleep, or late at night after roll- call. On these
occasions a camp curfew was declared. To break it meant to risk
being shot. For that same reason those of us prisoners who had been
forced to participate in preparations for the extermination of Jews
as well as in covering up all traces of the crimes were divided into
two groups. This was to prevent us from pooling our information and
obtaining detailed knowledge of the extermination methods. Prisoners
of the second working party the crematorium stokers, turned up only
after we had swept and thoroughly cleaned the yard. By the time they
arrived the gas chamber had already been aired and the gassed were
lying there as if they had just fallen naked from the sky." (Mu"ller,
30-39)
Work Cited
Mu"ller, Filip. Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers.
New York: Stein and Day, 1979

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